Monthly Archives: July 2011

The following blog details what is happening to us in our work life.

http://blogs.hbr.org/schwartz/2011/07/is-the-life-youre-living-worth.html#disqusComments

We need to learn to relax. Yes, I know we are told this ‘n’  number of times, but the reality is we do not know how. The best way that I have found is by progressive relaxation – deliberately tightening and loosening muscles from the toes upwards to the head. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_muscle_relaxation

The other is deep breathing – keeping your chest steady and moving your stomach in and out, forcing air into the deeper parts of your lungs that do not get oxygen with shallow breathing.

Try this once every two hours.

Social Entrepreneurship.

This word has been bandied around a lot, and many companies, colleges and people pay lip service to it.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_entrepreneurship

1. How do we create a sustainable enterprise that makes profits and fulfills social obligations?
2. Can we help uplift the stature of the small town that we came from, where we were nurtured, before the city lights seduced us to the big city?
3. How can we make more money that by having a job in the city?
4. How can we have more stature and recognition than being a factory worker in a big corporation?
5. Can we take the unemployed youth of our town, the girls who are prevented from having a career in another city and make something that will create wealth for the young people of our town?

NextWealth is showing the way. Read it here.

How I wish that some more mentees used this example, and created a sustainable enterprise in their home towns.

When you join an MBA course, you consider yourself a student. You behave like a student, learning from classes and books. When you leave the MBA course, after completing it, you are no longer a student. You are a corporate citizen and are being paid to behave like one.

In these two years, what have you learnt that makes you into a corporate citizen? Knowledge of management and its streams?

Does knowledge of Marketing, Finance, HR, IT and Operations make you a manager? Does that provide value to a company? The company can also search the internet for the data that you profess to have. In fact it is cheaper and more efficient, as this data is available in searchable form while it is available only incompletely in your mind. The difference between the internet and you is that you have arms and leg and can do things. But do what?

Doing things in a company means listening to your boss, understanding what he wants and doing it to his satisfaction. remember your boss contributes 90% to your career.

Doing things in a company means promoting yourself, your boss and your company and its products.

Doing things means executing projects to everyone’s satisfaction.

Doing things means influencing everyone to do what is required to be done.

How do you learn this in college if you are focused on memorizing and vomiting information?

If an MBA college teaches only theory, the instructors are simply aggregators of information. If you want book summaries, they are there on the internet. Why attend classes. Moreover, why not do a correspondence course?

So in order to be useful to any organization, apart from knowing the theory of management, you need to learn the practice of management.

You may argue: why do this?

1. This is a college, not a company and there is no opportunity to practice management.
2. Practice is what we will do in a company, we should focus on getting the maximum theory in college.

Let us evaluate these beliefs. By the way, these beliefs come from a resistance to transition from a student in academic life to an adult in real life. You will fight tooth and nail to resist these changes, because they move you out of your comfort zone.

1.  A company is made for profit and has an objective of creating a product, its need and to sell it. Everything else is secondary. You have an objective of creating yourself into an MBA, creating a need for you and sell yourself in an interview. Are you not a company?
2. You need to listen to your instructors, the deans, will your boss be any different?
3. You need to execute group assignments and individual assignments to everyone’s satisfaction, in a give time period. Is this not execution of projects?
4. You need to convince your colleagues and your professors to give you what you want. Is this not practicing influence?
5. Why should a company pay to teach you the practice of management?
6. Why should a company give you a high salary because you have imperfect theoretical knowledge?
7. Why should a company take a risk on you that you will be able to satisfactorily practice management? There is no proof and predictability of your capability.

So what should you do as an MBA student.

1. Keep an eye on your placement-ability. What does the market want and what can you do.
2. Understand that the college social system is no different from a company, with its own share of internal competition, cooperation, politics, groupism and need for influence. If you cannot handle yourself here, you will not be a good corporate citizen
3. Apart from mugging up information, you need to create transferable skills like managing your emotions, critical thinking, managing others, managing projects, managing stakeholders…managing life.

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/84/mba.html suggests what to do if you do not get a job.

 

 

As many of you know, there has been talk of writing a book, for a long time. Ultimately, it has become a reality. The book has gone for final proof reading, the cover page has been made, ISBN number has been obtained and we are ready to roll.

This is the first book of the 7 books that will be rolled out. This one focuses on ‘The MBA program’ – the demand and supply of MBAs, what recruiters want etc, then managing self and relationships and lastly, critical thinking (bringing some rationality into thinking).  This is for the first trimester.

The other books are on effective project management, and then on hard core sales and negotiation.

Then there will be a book on how to do an effective SIP.

In the 2nd year, I will focus on Emotional Intelligence, the Business Common Sense and lastly transition to corporate life.

All in all, these books are focused on soft skills that are transferable across any job.

Wish me well.  Go to the top of www.mbablues.com and look at the menu options.